Chapter Seven: Social Stratification
TB_Q7.1.52
Discuss the caste system in India and compare it to the class system in the United States.
Feedback: In a caste system like India’s, social rank is determined by birth into a particular social group, which establishes
one’s social position, work, and range of marriage partners. In a social class system like the United States’,
people are ranked on the basis of income, occupation, and education, or some combination of those things.
Position in a caste system is essentially fixed, while position in a social class system has room for mobility.
Source ID: 3.0.2
Learning Objective: LO 7.l: Understand how your position in the system of stratification has affected your life chances.
Topic/Concept: Major Concepts of Stratification
Difficulty Level: Difficult
Skill Level: Analyze It
TB_Q7.2.53
Discuss the concept of the culture of poverty and critiques of that idea.
Feedback:Culture of poverty is the idea that the poor have a value system that keeps them and their children in poverty.
Believing that those values are transmitted from generation to generation, culture of poverty theorists say that
even if poverty were eliminated, the former poor would probably continue to prefer instant gratification, be
immoral by middle-class standards, and so on. From this view, the poor have a subculture with values that differ
radically from the values of the other social classes and this explains their poverty. Edward Banfield said the
poor focused only on the present and not on the future. Critics of the culture of poverty hypothesis argue that the
poor are an integral part of U.S. society; they do not abandon the dominant values of the society, but rather,
retain them while simultaneously holding an alternative set of values. This alternative set is a result of adaptation
to the conditions of poverty.
Source ID: 3.0.3
Learning Objective: LO 7.2: Critique the deficiency theories of class stratification.
Topic/Concept: Explanations of Class Stratification: Deficiency Theories
Difficulty Level:
Skill Level:
TB_Q7.2.54
Discuss institutional discrimination and ways it traps the poor in a cycle of poverty.
Feedback: Insitutional discrimination is when the customary ways of doing things, prevailing attitudes and expectations,
and accepted structural arrangements work to the disadvantage of the poor. Two ways institutional discrimination
trap the poor in a cycle of poverty are education and health. Poor children are not expected to do well in school,
and so are not given the resources to succeed in school or to attend college. Poor people have less access to
preventive and other health care, and frequently work in jobs without sick leave, so lose their jobs when they
miss work due to illness, leaving them with less money to maintain their health.
Source ID: 3.0.4
Learning Objective: LO 7.2: Critique the deficiency theories of class stratification.
Topic/Concept: Explanations of Class Stratification: Deficiency Theories
Difficulty Level: Difficult
Skill Level: Analyze It
TB_Q7.3.55
Discuss the basic tenet of capitalism and how it affects the persistence of poverty.
Feedback: The basic tenet of capitalism is that who gets what is determined by private profit rather than by collective need. The
primacy of maximizing profit works to promote poverty in several ways. (1) Employers are constrained to pay their
workers the least possible in wages and benefits. (2) The primacy of profit induces poverty by maintaining a surplus of
laborers, because a surplus depresses wages. (3) The impact of the primacy of profits in capitalism is that employers
make investment decisions without regard for their employees (potential or actual).
Source ID: 3.0.5.
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